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Historiography of early Islam
The historiography of early Islam refers to the study of the early origins of Islam based on a critical analysis, evaluation, and examination of authentic primary sources materials and the organization of these sources into a narrative timeline that is subject to scholarly methods of criticism. Western academic historians have come to believe that the traditional Islamic version of those events is problematic. The Islamic sources are from a period dating between 100 and 150 years after the events being referred to had taken place. There are very few surviving primary sources for the period. There are few surviving manuscripts and inscriptions, and only sketchy archaeological data. Islamic history seems to have been primarily transmitted orally until well after the rise of the Abbasid Caliphate. Islamic scholars then sifted and recorded the traditions. They did so in an extremely politicized context, just after one dynasty, the Umayyads, had been overthrown, and when the groups that eventually became the Sunni and Shi'a sects of Islam were putting forth rival histories of Islam. Modern Western scholars are much less likely than Islamic scholars to trust the work of the Abbasid historians. Western historians approach the classic Islamic histories with varying degrees of circumspection. A consideration of oral transmissions in general with some specific early Islamic reference is Jan Vansina's "Oral Tradition as History." History of Muslim historians Science of biography, science of hadith, and Isnad Muslim historical traditions first began developing from the earlier 7th century with the reconstruction of Muhammad's life following his death. Narratives regarding Muhammad and his companions from various sources, it was necessary to verify which sources were more reliable. In order to evaluate these sources, various methodologies were developed, such as the "science of biography", "science of hadith" and "Isnad" (chain of transmission). These methodologies were later applied to other historical figures in the Muslim world. Ilm ar-Rijal (Arabic) is the "science of biography" especially as practiced in Islam, where it was first applied to the sira, the life of the prophet of Islam, Muhammad, and then the lives of the four Rightly Guided Caliphs who expanded Islamic dominance rapidly. Since validating the sayings of Muhammad is a major study ("Isnad"), accurate biography has always been of great interest to Muslim biographers, who accordingly became experts at sorting out facts from accusations, bias from evidence, etc., and were renowned throughout the known world for their honesty in recording history. Modern practices of scientific citation and historical method owe a great deal to the rigor of the Isnad tradition of early Muslims. The earliest surviving Islamic biography is Ibn Ishaq's Sirat Rasul Allah, written in the 8th century. The "science of hadith" is the process that Muslim scholars use to evaluate hadith. The classification of Hadith into Sahih (sound), Hasan (good) and Da'if (weak) was firmly established by Ali ibn al-Madini (161-234 AH). Later, al-Madini's student Muhammad al-Bukhari (810-870) authored a collection that he believed contained only Sahih hadith, which is now known as the Sahih Bukhari. Al-Bukhari's historical methods of testing hadiths and isnads is seen as the beginning of the method of citation and a precursor to the scientific method which was developed by later Muslim scientists. I. A. Ahmad writes: Other famous Muslim historians who studied the science of biography or science of hadith included Urwah ibn Zubayr (d. 712), Wahb ibn Munabbih (d. 728), Ibn Ishaq (d. 761), al-Waqidi (745-822), Ibn Hisham (d. 834), al-Maqrizi (1364–1442), and Ibn Hajar Asqalani (1372–1449), among others. Chronology Muhammad ibn Jarir al-Tabari (838-923) is known for writing a detailed and comprehensive chronicle of Mediterranean and Middle Eastern history in his History of the Prophets and Kings in 915. Along with his Researches on India, Biruni discussed more on his idea of history in his chronological work The Chronology of the Ancient Nations. History of science Al-Saghani (d. 990) wrote some of the earliest comments on the history of science. These included the following comparison between the "ancients" (including the ancient Babylonians, Egyptians, Greeks and Indians) and the "modern scholars" (the Muslim scientists of his time): Historiography, cultural history, and philosophy of history The first detailed studies on the subject of historiography itself and the first critiques on historical methods appeared in the works of the Arab Muslim historian and historiographer Ibn Khaldun (1332–1406), who is regarded as the father of historiography, cultural history,Mohamad Abdalla (Summer 2007). "Ibn Khaldun on the Fate of Islamic Science after the 11th Century", ''Islam & Science '''5 (1), p. 61-70. and the philosophy of history, especially for his historiographical writings in the Muqaddimah (Latinized as Prolegomena) and Kitab al-Ibar (Book of Advice).S. Ahmed (1999). A Dictionary of Muslim Names. C. Hurst & Co. Publishers. ISBN 1850653569. His Muqaddimah also laid the groundwork for the observation of the role of state, communication, propaganda and systematic bias in history,H. Mowlana (2001). "Information in the Arab World", Cooperation South Journal 1'. and he discussed the rise and fall of civilizations. Franz Rosenthal wrote in the ''History of Muslim Historiography: In the Muqaddimah, Ibn Khaldun warned of seven mistakes that he thought that historians regularly committed. In this criticism, he approached the past as strange and in need of interpretation. The originality of Ibn Khaldun was to claim that the cultural difference of another age must govern the evaluation of relevant historical material, to distinguish the principles according to which it might be possible to attempt the evaluation, and lastly, to feel the need for experience, in addition to rational principles, in order to assess a culture of the past. Ibn Khaldun often criticized "idle superstition and uncritical acceptance of historical data." As a result, he introduced a scientific method to the study of history, which was considered something "new to his age", and he often referred to it as his "new science", now associated with historiography.Ibn Khaldun, Franz Rosenthal, N. J. Dawood (1967), The Muqaddimah: An Introduction to History, p. x, Princeton University Press, ISBN 0691017549. His historical method also laid the groundwork for the observation of the role of state, communication, propaganda and systematic bias in history, and he is thus considered to be the "father of historiography"Salahuddin Ahmed (1999). A Dictionary of Muslim Names. C. Hurst & Co. Publishers. ISBN 1850653569. or the "father of the philosophy of history".Dr. S. W. Akhtar (1997). "The Islamic Concept of Knowledge", Al-Tawhid: A Quarterly Journal of Islamic Thought & Culture '''12 (3). World history Muhammad ibn Jarir al-Tabari (838-923) is known for writing a detailed and comprehensive chronicle of Mediterranean and Middle Eastern history in his History of the Prophets and Kings in 915. Abu al-Hasan 'Alī al-Mas'ūdī (896-956), known as the "Herodotus of the Arabs", was the first to combine history and scientific geography in a large-scale work, Muruj adh-dhahab wa ma'adin al-jawahir (The Meadows of Gold and Mines of Gems), a book on world history. Until the 10th century, history most often meant political and military history, but this was not so with Persian historian Biruni (973-1048). In his Kitab fi Tahqiq ma l'il-Hind (Researches on India), he did not record political and military history in any detail, but wrote more on India's cultural, scientific, social and religious history.M. S. Khan (1976). "al-Biruni and the Political History of India", Oriens 25, p. 86-115. Along with his Researches on India, Biruni discussed more on his idea of history in his chronological work The Chronology of the Ancient Nations. Egyptology The study of Egyptology began in Arab Egypt from the 9th century. The first known attempts at deciphering Egyptian hieroglyphs were made by Dhul-Nun al-Misri and Ibn Wahshiyya in the 9th century, who were able to at least partly understand what was written. Abdul Latif al-Baghdadi, a teacher at Cairo's Al-Azhar University in the 13th century, wrote detailed descriptions on ancient Egyptian monuments.Dr. Okasha El Daly (2005), Egyptology: The Missing Millennium: Ancient Egypt in Medieval Arabic Writings, UCL Press, ISBN 1844720632. (cf. Arabic Study of Ancient Egypt, Foundation for Science Technology and Civilisation.) The first known attempts at deciphering Egyptian hieroglyphs were made by made by Arab historians in medieval Egypt during the 9th and 10th centuries. By then, hieroglyphs had long been forgotten in Egypt, and were replaced by the Coptic and Arabic alphabets. Dhul-Nun al-Misri and Ibn Wahshiyya were the first historians to be able to at least partly decipher what was written in the ancient Egyptian hieroglyphs, by relating them to the contemporary Coptic language used by Coptic priests in their time.Dr. Okasha El Daly, Deciphering Egyptian Hieroglyphs in Muslim Heritage, Museum of Science and Industry in Manchester. The Egyptian Muslim historian Mourtadi wrote an Arabic book on ancient Egyptian monuments, which was later published in France and Britain in the 17th century. Ibn Wahshiyya's Arabic book on Egyptology, in which he deciphered a number of Egyptian hieroglyphs, An Arabic manuscript of Ibn Wahshiyya's work was later read by Athanasius Kircher in the 17th century, and then translated and published in English by Joseph Hammer in 1806 as Ancient Alphabets and Hieroglyphic Characters Explained; with an Account of the Egyptian Priests, their Classes, Initiation, and Sacrifices in the Arabic Language by Ahmad Bin Abubekr Bin Wahishih, 16 years before Jean-François Champollion's complete decipherment of Egyptian hieroglyphs. Indology Until the 10th century, history most often meant political and military history, but this was not so with Persian historian Biruni (973-1048). In his Kitab fi Tahqiq ma l'il-Hind (Researches on India), he did not record political and military history in any detail, but wrote more on India's cultural, scientific, social and religious history.M. S. Khan (1976). "al-Biruni and the Political History of India", Oriens 25, p. 86-115. Biruni is considered the father of Indology for his detailed studies on Indian history.Zafarul-Islam Khan, At The Threshhold (sic) Of A New Millennium – II, The Milli Gazette. Islamic sources Traditional Islamic sources for early Islamic history : See also: List of Islamic texts * Qur'an * Hadith * Sira and ''Maghāzī'' * Tafsir * Fiqh * Futūh * Inscriptions * Coinage * Manuscripts ** Sana'a manuscripts ** Oxyrhynchus papyri (eg PERF 558) ** Qur'an collections * Archaeological records * Non-Muslim sources 7th Century Islamic sources * 692 - Qur'anic Mosaic on the Dome of the Rock. * The Book of Sulaym ibn Qays; a Hadith collections collected by Sulaym ibn Qays(death: 76 AH (680)). It is a collection of hadith from 1st Century of the Islamic calendar. 7th Century non-Islamic sources There are numerous early references to Islam in non-Islamic sources, many have been collected in historiographer Robert G. Hoyland's compilation Seeing Islam As Others Saw It. One of the first books to analyze these works was Hagarism authored by Michael Cook and Patricia Crone. Hagarism concludes that looking at the early non-Islamic sources provides a much different and more accurate picture of early Islamic history than the later Islamic sources do, although its thesis has little acceptance. For some, the date of composition is controversial. Some provide an account of early Islam which significantly contradicts the traditional Islamic accounts of two centuries later. * 634 Doctrina Iacobi * 636 Fragment on the Arab Conquests * 639 Sophronius, Patriarch of Jerusalem * 640 Thomas the Presbyter * 640 Homily on the Child Saints of Babylon * 642 PERF 558 * 644 Coptic Apocalypse of Pseudo-Shenute * 648 Life of Gabriel of Qartmin * 650 Fredegar * 655 Pope Martin I * 659 Isho'yahb III of Adiabene * 660 Sebeos, Bishop of the Bagratunis * 660 A Chronicler of Khuzistan * 662 Maximus the Confessor * 665 Benjamin I * 670 Arculf, a Pilgrim * 676 The Synod of 676 * 680 George of Resh'aina * 680 The Secrets of Rabbi Simon ben Yohai * 680 Bundahishn * 681 Trophies of Damascus * 687 Athanasius of Balad, Patriarch of Antioch * 687 John bar Penkaye * 690 Syriac Apocalypse of Pseudo-Methodius * 692 Syriac Apocalypse of Pseudo-Ephraem * 694 John of Nikiu * 697 Anti-Jewish Polemicists 7th Century ambiguous sources * 644 - Inscription marking the death of Umar, Saudi Arabia.Twenty-three new inscriptions on Memory of the World Register of Documentary Collections - UNESCO, inscription reads "In the name of God (Bismillah), I Zuhair wrote the date of the death of Umar the year four and twenty (AH)" Famous Muslim historians * Urwah ibn Zubayr (d. 712) ** Hadith of Umar's speech of forbidding Mut'ah * Ibn Shihab al-Zuhri (d. 742) ** Hadith of Umar's speech of forbidding Mut'ah ** Hadith of prohibition of Mut'ah at Khaybar * Ibn Ishaq (d. 761) ** Sirah Rasul Allah * Imam Malik (d. 796) ** Al-Muwatta * Al-Waqidi (745-822) ** Book of History and Campaigns * Ali ibn al-Madini (777-850) ** The Book of Knowledge about the Companions * Ibn Hisham (d. 834) ** Sirah Rasul Allah * Dhul-Nun al-Misri (d. 859) * Muhammad al-Bukhari (810-870) ** Sahih Bukhari * Muslim b. al-Hajjaj (d. 875) ** Sahih Muslim * Ibn Majah (d. 886) ** Sunan Ibn Majah * Abu Da'ud (d. 888) ** Sunan Abi Da'ud * Al-Tirmidhi (d. 892) ** Sunan al-Tirmidhi * Abu al-Hasan 'Alī al-Mas'ūdī (896-956) ** Muruj adh-dhahab wa ma'adin al-jawahir (The Meadows of Gold and Mines of Gems) (947) * Ibn Wahshiyya (c. 904) ** Nabataean Agriculture ** Kitab Shawq al-Mustaham * Al-Nasa'i (d. 915) ** Sunan al-Sughra * Muhammad ibn Jarir al-Tabari (838-923) ** History of the Prophets and Kings ** Tafsir al-Tabari * Al-Baladhuri (d. 892) ** Kitab Futuh al-Buldan ** Genealogies of the Nobles * Hakim al-Nishaburi (d. 1014) ** Al-Mustadrak alaa al-Sahihain * Abū Rayhān al-Bīrūnī (973-1048) ** Indica ** History of Mahmud of Ghazni and his father ** History of Khawarazm * Abd al-Latif al-Baghdadi (13th century) * Ibn Abi Zar (d. 1310/1320) ** Rawd al-Qirtas * Al-Dhahabi (1274-1348) ** Major History of Islam ** Talkhis al-Mustadrak ** Tadhkirat al-huffaz ** Al-Kamal fi ma`rifat al-rijal * Ibn Khaldun (1332-1406) ** Muqaddimah ** Kitab al-Ibar * Ibn Hajar al-Asqalani (1372-1449) ** Fath al-Bari ** Tahdhib al-Tahdhib ** Finding the Truth in Judging the Companinons ** Bulugh al-Maram Modern secular scholarship The earliest Western scholarship on Islam tended to be Christian translators and commentators. They translated the easily available Sunni texts from Arabic into European languages including German, Italian, French, or English, then summarized and commented in a fashion that was often hostile to Islam. Notable Christian scholars include: * William Muir (1819–1905) * Reinhart Dozy (1820–1883) "Die Israeliten zu Mecca" (1864) * David Samuel Margoliouth (1858–1940) * William St. Clair Tisdall (1859–1928) * Leone Caetani (1869–1935) * Alphonse Mingana (1878–1937) All these scholars worked in the late 19th and early 20th century. Another pioneer of Islamic studies, Abraham Geiger (1810–1874), was a prominent Jewish rabbi and approached Islam from that standpoint in his "Was hat Mohammed aus dem Judenthume aufgenommen?" (1833). Geiger's themes were continued in Rabbi Abraham I. Katsh's "Judaism and the Koran" (1962)Online text: Other scholars, notably those in the German tradition, took a more neutral view. The late 19th century scholar Julius Wellhausen (1844-1918) is a prime example. They also started, cautiously, to question the truth of the Arabic texts. They took a source critical approach, trying to sort the Islamic texts into elements to be accepted as historically true, and elements to be discarded as polemic or pious fiction. These scholars might include: * Michael Jan de Goeje (1836–1909) * Theodor Nöldeke (1836–1930) * Ignaz Goldziher (1850–1921) * Henri Lammens (1862–1937) * Arthur Jeffery (1892–1959) * H. A. R. Gibb (1895–1971) * Joseph Schacht (1902–1969) * Montgomery Watt (1909–2006) In the 1970s, what has been described as a "wave of sceptical scholars" (Donner 1998 p. 23) challenged a great deal of the received wisdom in Islamic studies. They argued that the Islamic historical tradition had been greatly corrupted in transmission. They tried to correct or reconstruct the early history of Islam from other, presumably more reliable, sources such as coins, inscriptions, and non-Islamic sources. The oldest of this group was John Wansbrough (1928-2002). Wansbrough's works were widely noted, but perhaps not widely read. Donner (1998) says: : Wansbrough's awkward prose style, diffuse organization, and tendency to rely on suggestive implication rather than tight argument (qualities not found in his other published works) have elicited exasperated comment from many reviewers. (Donner 1998 p. 38) Wansbrough's scepticism influenced a number of younger scholars, including: * Martin Hinds (1941–1988) * Patricia Crone (b. 1945) * Michael Cook In 1977, Crone and Cook published Hagarism: The Making of the Islamic World, which argued that the early history of Islam is a myth, generated after the conquests of Egypt, Syria, and Persia to prop up the new Arab regimes in those lands and give them a solid ideological foundation. According to their theory the Qur'an was composed later, rather than early, and the Arab conquests may have been the cause, rather than the consequence, of Islam. The main evidence adduced for this thesis was based upon a contemporary body of non-Muslim sources to many early Islamic events. If such events could not be supported by outside evidence, then (according to Crone and Cook) they should be dismissed as myth. Crone and Cook's more recent work has involved intense scrutiny of early Islamic sources, but not total rejection of those sources. (See, for instance, Crone's 1987 publications, Roman, Provincial, and Islamic Law and Meccan Trade and the Rise of Islam, both of which assume the standard outline of early Islamic history while questioning certain aspects of it; also Cook's 2001 Commanding Right and Forbidding Wrong in Islamic Thought, which also cites early Islamic sources as authoritative.) One writer claims that they have in fact disavowed the work (http://baltimorechronicle.com/2006/042606AliKhan.shtml http://www.thedailystar.net/2006/04/28/d60428020635.htm) but in the absence of direct comment from Crone and Cook, it is difficult to know what to make of his claims. In her book Meccan Trade And The Rise Of Islam, Crone states: :If one storyteller should happen to mention a raid, the next one would tell you the exact date of this raid, and the third one would furnish you even more details. Waqidi (d. 823), who wrote years after Ibn Ishaq (d. 768), will always give precise dates, locations, names, where Ibn Ishaq has none, accounts of what triggered the expedition, miscellaneous information to lend color to the event, as well as reasons why, as was usually the case, no fighting took place. No wonder that scholars are fond of Waqidi: where else does one find such wonderfully precise information about everything one wishes to know? But given that this information was all unknown to Ibn Ishaq, its value is doubtful in the extreme. And if spurious information accumulated at this rate in the two generations between Ibn Ishaq and Waqidi, it is hard to avoid the conclusion that even more must have accumulated in the three generations between the Prophet and Ibn Ishaq.Patricia Crone, Mecan Trade and the rise of Islam, (1987), pp. 223-224 Claims for the late composition of the Qur'an have also been reinforced by the 1972 discovery of a cache of ancient Qur'ans in a mosque in Sana'a, Yemen. The German scholar Gerd R. Puin has been investigating these Qur'an fragments for years. His research team made 35,000 microfilm photographs of the manuscripts; Puin has not published the entirety of his work, but he has stated that there were 2 versions of the text in the manuscript, one written over the other, thus putting into the question the Muslim beliefs in the invariancy of the Qur'an. He has dated the documents to the early part of the 8th century. Atlantic Monthly Journal, Atlantic Monthly article: What is the Koran ,January 1999 Contemporary scholars have begun to turn to the study of the Islamic sources in a sceptical mood. They tend to use the histories rather than the hadith, and to analyze the histories in terms of the tribal and political affiliations of the narrators (if that can be established), thus making it easier to guess in which direction the material might have been slanted. Notable scholars include: * Fred M. Donner * Wilferd Madelung * Gerald Hawting * Jonathan Berkey * Andrew Rippin * G.H.A Juynboll Bridging the divide A few scholars have managed to bridge the divide between Islamic and Western-style secular scholarship. They have completed both Islamic and Western academic training. * Fazlur Rahman * Suliman Bashear * Javed Ahmed Ghamidi Historiography of Islamic science The history of science in the Islamic world, like all history, is filled with questions of interpretation. Historians of science generally consider that the study of Islamic science during and after the Islamic Golden Age, like all history, must be seen within the particular circumstances of time and place. A. I. Sabra opened a recent overview of Arabic science by noting, "I trust no one would wish to contest the proposition that all of history is local history ... and the history of science is no exception."A. I. Sabra, Situating Arab Science: Locality versus Essence," Isis, 87(1996):654-70; reprinted in Michael H. Shank, ed., The Scientific Enterprise in Antiquity and the Middle Ages," (Chicago: Univ. of Chicago Pr., 2000), pp. 215-231. Some scholars avoid such local historical approaches and seek to identify essential relations between Islam and science that apply at all times and places. The Pakistani physicist, Pervez Hoodbhoy, portrayed "religious fanaticism to be the dominant relation of religion and science in Islam". Sociologist Toby Huff claimed that Islam lacked the "rationalist view of man and nature" that became dominant in Europe. The Persian philosopher and historian of science, Seyyed Hossein Nasr saw a more positive connection in "an Islamic science that was spiritual and antisecular" which "pointed the way to a new 'Islamic science' that would avoid the dehumanizing and despiritualizing mistakes of Western science."F. Jamil Ragep, "Freeing Astronomy from Philosophy: An Aspect of Islamic Influence on Science," Osiris, topical issue on Science in Theistic Contexts: Cognitive Dimensions, n.s. 16(2001):49-50, note 3 Nasr identified a distinctly Muslim approach to science, flowing from Islamic monotheism and the related theological prohibition against portraying graven images. In science, this is reflected in a philosophical disinterest in describing individual material objects, their properties and characteristics and instead a concern with the ideal, the Platonic form, which exists in matter as an expression of the will of the Creator. Thus one can "see why mathematics was to make such a strong appeal to the Muslim: its abstract nature furnished the bridge that Muslims were seeking between multiplicity and unity."[http://www.fordham.edu/halsall/med/nasr.html Seyyed Hossein Nasr, Science and Civilization in Islam.] Rather than identifying such essential relations between Islam and science, some historians of science question the value of drawing boundaries that label the sciences, and the scientists who practice them, in specific cultural, civilizational, or linguistic terms. Consider the case of Nasir al-Din Tusi (1201–1274), who invented his mathematical theorem, the Tusi Couple, while he was director of Maragheh observatory. Tusi's patron and founder of the observatory was the non-Muslim Mongol conqueror of Baghdad, Hulagu Khan. The Tusi-couple "was first encountered in an Arabic text, written by a man who spoke Persian at home, and used that theorem, like many other astronomers who followed him and were all working in the "Arabic/Islamic" world, in order to reform classical Greek astronomy, and then have his theorem in turn be translated into Byzantine Greek towards the beginning of the fourteenth century, only to be used later by Copernicus and others in Latin texts of Renaissance Europe."George Saliba (1999). Whose Science is Arabic Science in Renaissance Europe? References Bibliography * Donner, Fred Narratives of Islamic Origins: The Beginnings of Islamic Historical Writing, Darwin Press, 1998 * Hoyland, Robert G. Seeing Islam as Others Saw It: A Survey and Evaluation of Christian, Jewish and Zoroastrian Writings on Early Islam, Darwin Press, 1997 * Vansina, Jan "Oral Tradition as History," University of Wisconsin Press, Madison, 1985 External links * http://islamonline.net/english/Contemporary/2003/04/Article01a.shtml and following; an Islamic view of the development of the academic study of Islam Category:Islamic history